Covid-19 Boosts European Label Demand
After two years of modest, 1.5 percent annual de- mand growth in 2018 and 2019, the Covid-19 pandem- ic has boosted European demand for self-adhesive la- bel materials in the first half of 2020, according to the 13th edition of FINAT’s six-monthly Radar. Consump- tion of labelstock materials in the wider European eco-
nomic area was more than 8 percent above the level recorded in the same period last year. In the second quarter alone, demand for filmic roll label materials even exceeded the second quarter of 2019 by almost 25 percent. Increasing Demand The incremental demand increase for label materials in the first half of 2020 was almost 320 million square meters. More than half of this (53 percent) was com- posed by filmic label materials. In relative terms, the most severely affected regions, UK and Ireland and Southern Europe,were behind the other (double digit) regions but still recorded sizeable increases. The excessive overall demand growth in the first month (most likely reaching its peak in the first three months of the Pandemic, with the European econo- my in lockdown) was attributed to the crucial role of self-adhesive labels as enablers of the critical infra- structure in times of crisis: food, healthcare, person- al care, sanitary products and supply chain logistics. This effect was compounded by stockpiling at retail- ers and brand owners, and the fact that households in lockdown decided to spend their spare time on home maintenance and home delivery of goods and services. Finally, with lockdown measures being released, it can hardly go unnoticed that self-adhesive products play an important part as ‘social distancing’ markers. On the other hand, label demand in ‘non-essential’ sectors like automotive, electronics, travel and cater- ing were suffering in the first half of 2020.The first two
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6 August 3, 2020 Flexo Market News
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